Mystery Science Theater 3000: C/D, S/D.

I am still in fact missing Gamera Vs. Guiron, though happily I've seen it a number of times -- that along with Gamera Vs. Gaos, It Conquered the World and four season six entries are now the only things I'm missing from season two on...

The biggest problem I have with it is that it falls into the "any opinion or reaction I have must somehow express a greater aesthetic" camp for which I have unending disdain and contempt. There are six paragraphs before MST3K is even mentioned. Fuck that. Like something or don't, and have the balls to ignore the increasingly-common taboo against disliking something simply because it isn't your thing or you think it's crap.

The thing I like abt Fujiwara's thing (and yes I do realize what a humorless piece of writing it is [but bits make me laugh out loud so eh]) is that it's about giving a shit, about not letting something slide. He thinks the whole enterprise was deeply, offensively unfunny, and that seemed like a rare and valuable enough er perspective w/r/t ile & mst.

If I stopped to rail about everything I found unfunny (or unmoving, I guess would be the word for dramas), I wouldn't have time to watch anything. The world is a big place. Entertainment media offer enormous amounts of things, especially if you speak English. I don't have time to stop to stomp the roses, and no patience for those who revel in it.

Now, railing about MST3K in its own style -- responding to it and heckling it -- that could be clever enough to be worth the time.

(For instance -- his complaint about 'why didn't they get the really big trashy movies to rip down' falls flat when you realize the economics of what the Brains had the rights and access to in their various TV deals...

And when they *did* do that, as happened with the Little Golden Statuette thingummybob, it actually undercut a lot of the claims MST3K could make to somehow being a subversive force battling against whiteelephantHollywoodbullshit because the special arguably ended up being essentially more hype for the Oscars and the Hollywood machine.

IIRC, the central reason for Fujiwara's groaning and moaning about MST3K was due to the lack of respect they were giving to these oddly wonderful artifacts suitable for voyeuristic delectation. (Fujiwara once wrote up a list of the best movies of 1953 and included *Robot Monster* as his tenth best -- and seriously, the only reason I can imagine ANYONE doing that is to prove some banal point about hegemony and the canon blah blah blah FIGHT THE POWER!!! etc. As bad movies go, there are so many better ones, like *Monster A Go-Go* for starters) This is baloney on many levels. "MST3K involves people making fun of bad movies" is a good shorthand description of the show, but only that: most of the time, Best Brains aren't "making fun" of the movies (most of the riffs' humor are totally incidental to the badness of the film), nor are most of the films they riff on aren't really *bad.* A good chunk are, most are just utterly indifferent, and few are pretty good for what they are (say, the Lassie or Godzilla movies.), and a movie's badness is no guarantee of an episode's goodness. (I think *Monster A Go-Go* is probably the worst thing I've ever seen and most of the time BB was just struggling to say something, anything about it.) Most of the time I attribute BB's claims to a movie being bad as just a bunch of hyperbole for comedy's sake. (On the other hand, if *I* had to watch most movies with the kind of attentiveness *they* did in creating MST3K, I think most films would probably come up short, anyway.)

And ANYWAY, I knew a lot of hardcore MSTies who argued the 'essence' of the show wasn't the riffing but the relationship between Joel/Mike, the 'bots and the Mads.

Y'all started this by making me think about it and these lines have been in my head all weekend. However, I won't keep posting them, but will leave you with this last one, which I actually say all the time:

Tep: I don't think it's the same at all (effort of making a film vs effort of making comments while watching films). It's just that renting B-movies with friends was already a popular pastime with people I knew before I ever knew of this show. MST3K seemed less fun than doing it in 'real time' with your own friends if that's what you want to do. I didn't think it added much to the experience or to the movies. And I guess I just didn't think they were that much funnier anyway (e.g. the "dead elf" line Ned quoted).

While I'd agree that the host segments for the Sci-Fi era weren't up to Dr. F & Frank quality, they did some incredible shows for those three years. Riding With Death holds up incredibly well, as does Pumaman and Time Chasers. Not only are the movies of high MST3K quality, the riffs are up there as well. Plus add in Final Sacrifice's Canadian jabs, Touch of Satan's 70's riffs and walnut jokes and the wonderful dance sequence in Mole People ... great moments all of them.

And their parody of Behind the Music with "The Band That Played California Lady" in Track of the Moon Beast is one of their best skits.

MST3K seemed less fun than doing it in 'real time' with your own friends if that's what you want to do.

I think that's a fair thing to say. I remember when us AOL MSTies would get together and riff on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or A Star Is Born, what would happen *was* more hilarious than the average episode. But one might argue that by watching Best Brains riff on, say, The Incredible Melting Man, the pleasures we might get personally or collectively riffing on the movie would not only get partially replaced by the pleasure of THEM doing it, but also by the pleasures of indulging in the shared culture of MSTiedom -- learning and trading BB's lines, say, much like we're doing here.

An aside: I suppose someone like Fujiwara might say YOU SEE YOU SEE YOU'RE GIVING UP THE FRUITS OF YOUR OWN CRITICAL ACTIVITY FOR THAT OF OTHERS though I'm not sure how different this is from, say, trading lines of Horace or Milton, or using something Benjamin or Aristotle once said for your own nerfarious purposes. Or how it prevents us from "playing the home game," if you will.

Rutherford B. Hayes was born humbly to his own son, Rutherford B. Hayes Jr., in Delaware (while it was still Ohio) sometime after the French Revolution. Rejecting a career as a professional speller, he was admitted to the bar in 1815, though he did not drink lustfully from it. Serving heroically in the Civil War, Hayes admitted later that it was in the army he first tasted human flesh. In 1876, Hayes beat Bill Tilden in a three-set quarterfinal at Flushing Meadows which caused the Electrical College to declare him President of the United States.

Here are a few highlights of the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes: In 1877, Reconstruction ended, and Jacques Derrida was named Secretary of Linguistics, and the era of Deconstruction began and continues to this day. Thomas Edison invented the pornograph, beginning the Age of Pornography. President Hayes then passed the Hayes Act, started the Hayes Office, won fame as an American lyric tenor, and became Archibishop of New York in 1919.

After he retired, he founded the original ZZ Top with James Garfield and Chester Allen Arthur; shocked the world with a publicity stunt when, on a bet, he made a tent out of the underwear of William Howard Taft and lived inside for a full year; and later, Hayes retired from the stage and did a series of memorable character parts in Hollywood. Who can forget the time he was slapped by Jacqueline Bisset in the 1971 Universal movie, Airport ? And then, after inventing ringworm, Hayes died. His last words were: "I have only one life to live -- let me live it as a blond!"

I've already ceded the Godzilla movies and The Painted Hills; Space Travellers is OK, if static; maybe the Hercules ones and the Russo-Finnish ones because they've got built-in camp value; This Island Earth of course; Bride of the Monster and It Conquered the World have some bravura performances; I actually find The Deadly Bees pretty suspenseful (well, *I* was faked out) and the Hamlet they chose is hardly the best version but I get teary in the end.

Not many *good* films, but it's not impossible to riff on a good movie: M Sampo once said that La Jetée and The Wizard of Oz would be pretty prime experiences. But in general good movies are too engaging -- too distracting -- to use for MSTing.

My roommate and I recently watched "The Sword And The Dragon" again, and while it's not nearly as good a Finnish epic movie (or episode, in general) as the Sampo movie (whose name completely eludes me right now) it DOES have one of the best skits they ever did, "A Joke: A Film by August Strindberg". Which would be impossible to recreate in text so I won't even bother trying.

I actually think it's the best one in terms of sheer budget-on-screen spectacle -- over the top and overacted at points but beats the fuck out of just about every sort of 'epic fantasy' movie after it (in the non-sci fi trappings sense) until recent days.